Sunflower: A 5th Doctor ShortTrip
by That-Other-Doctor
Summary: Set between "Frontios" and "Resurrection of the Daleks". Nothing can live on love and hope alone: not me, not Turlough, not the Doctor, not even a sunflower.


_Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are._

* * *

The Doctor kept a vase of sunflowers, near the window of a particularly large, sunlight room deep within the TARDIS. Naturally, I'd happened to wander across them purely by accident, for I never really knew where I was headed on my jaunts through the vast time ship. There's so little logic to its navigation, that you might as well be spinning in circles while pointing a finger.

Nevertheless, my wanderlust landed me in a room painted a subtle shade of gold, like honey. The rays of a mysterious afternoon sun streamed in through the huge french windows and set the walls ablaze with sunlight. I felt half-inclined to gaze through the frosted panes to try and figure out where on earth the natural lighting could be coming from, but the sunflowers caught my attention.

The room was entirely empty, save for a small, cherry coffee table and an ornate vase full of the most beautiful sunflowers. Each bloom was easily the size of my head; the petals were bright banana yellow and the olive intricacies of the flower's central depression swirled in mathematical harmony until disappearing to a point near the middle. Nyssa could have told you about the plant's structural composites, Adric could have explained the Fibonacci Sequence describing the pattern of the sunflower's phyllotaxis, and Turlough could have told you that it was going to die in three and a half months. Me . . . well, I just felt inclined to enjoy its beauty. In a way, understanding detracts from raw appreciation. The cold, detached observation of anything can make it seem a little more mundane, and a little less magical.

I don't know anything about plant biology or higher mathematics; I've never really been as clever as my shipmates. In a way, I pitied them for that. If Nyssa or Adric or even Turlough were to gaze at a sunflower, they would simply see a sunflower, whereas I saw a work of art, a symphony of color and symmetry flowing together in perfect harmony. I took the largest sunflower, it's stem the length of my arm, and hugged it to my chest. That sunflower set me apart. I was a human amongst aliens, it gave me something with which to reassure my identity in such a big, big universe so full of danger and the unknown.

I carried that sunflower with me for days. When I passed Turlough, he raised an eyebrow and gave me a wary, degrading shake of his head. That would have annoyed me under any other circumstance; it would have annoyed anyone. But I took pride, and a secret sort of satisfaction, in the fact that I was happier at that moment than the boy had ever been. Sympathy made me bear Turlough's antics.

I didn't notice when the sunflower's head began to wilt. Rather, I noticed and chose to ignore it. The golden room with the large windows was worlds away from me now, and the sunflower was beginning to realize this. He had no water and no sunlight, just the harsh illumination of the TARDIS and the tight grip of an overly passionate human. But one cannot live on love and hope alone. Nothing can: not me, not Turlough, not the Doctor, not even a sunflower. As the days passed, my rock in an alien world of uncertainty began to die.

I tried so hard to find that room again. I ran so far, up and down corridors like a crazed olympic sprinter, always clasping the sunflower to my chest. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how long I cried, I could not find the room of sunshine, of happiness and life. I couldn't even find the bloomin' kitchen. A glass of water: I could not find a single glass of water. All the while, wilted petals carpeted my steps. It wasn't long before all I held in my hands with blackened, globular head attached to a grey and withering stem. _It_ was gone. The beauty, the harmony, and the magic had been snuffed out like a candle flame in a gust of wind.

"Tegan . . ."

Then the Doctor was there, standing before me, hands in pockets, not looking the least bit surprised. If he found it odd that I was hunched over, crying over the remains of a sunflower, he didn't show it.

"I took it from its home, and it died." I wept, "I killed it."

The Doctor gave me a wan smile. "Some things are never meant to leave, Tegan. Some things live by simply surviving. Some things don't need adventure or appreciation or admiration to get by, just a little sunshine and a glass of water."

I cast my damp eyes up and looked at him. I knew the Doctor as a maverick, an explorer of the universe and a righter of wrongs. One who would always be there to make sure the story finished with 'Happily Ever After'.

But this time, when I looked up, I didn't see the Doctor. I saw an old man, wizened to years beyond my reckoning, treading through each adventure and each day in the hope that it wouldn't be his last.

I didn't see a work of art.

I saw a sunflower.

The magic was gone.

* * *

It was time to go.


End file.
